256 Crows 



May beetles, and grasshoppers. Seeds of various 

 kinds are also eaten by the crow, although upon the 

 whole this is probably rather beneficial than otherwise. 



To be perfectly fair, however, I must mention 

 some of the most flagrant crimes of the crows. Prob- 

 ably the one most talked about among ornithologists 

 is that of the destruction of the eggs and young of wild 

 birds. This is one of the crow's worst habits. But 

 his bad reputation has grown more out of the farmer's 

 grievance against him — that he steals corn. It is 

 true that the crow does sometimes pull up the tender 

 blades for the kernel at the root, but even here he 

 is condemned upon appearances rather than upon 

 actual facts. In other words, the farmers accuse the 

 crows of pulling corn until it is four or five inches in 

 height, every time they alight upon a cornfield. Now 

 the fact of it is that the crows are after insects of 

 various kinds and other food, rather than the com, 

 although the corn may be puUed at the same time. 



A farmer acquaintance of mine was greatly dis- 

 tressed over the crows that visited the field in which 

 he had planted corn. He talked so much about it 

 that I visited the field several times both before and 

 after the corn was up, and I saw but slight evidence 

 that the crows were disturbing it. I told him so, but 

 he seemed to have little confidence in my theory that 



